


Always Another on the Way

by AstroGirl



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Canon Related, Gen, Minor Character(s), Time War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 12:22:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6374605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All the Sisterhood of Karn want is to live their lives and practice their rites in peace.  But life can be difficult when you have intrusive neighbors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always Another on the Way

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Doctor Who Minor Character Ficathon. The prompt was "The Sisterhood of Karn: 'He's on his way.'" I've probably interpreted that more broadly than expected. 
> 
> Contains references to and spoilers for Classic Who's "The Brain of Morbius" and various bits of New Who canon all the way up through "Hell-Bent."

Karn. It is meant to be a place of isolation, of spirituality and contemplation, where the Sisterhood can develop their powers as they choose without interference or judgment.

But they are never entirely alone here. There in the sky, bright and steady, Gallifrey never lets them forget that it exists.

**

Morbius is the first to come. Morbius, with his ambition, and his arrogance, and his armies. The disruption he brings is bad enough, but the chaos sown by those who come to stop him is worse. They are like squabbling, violent children, Maren says, her voice creaking with contempt. Ohila – still young in her agelessness, but already older than any Time Lord soldier there – agrees.

When Morbius is executed, they celebrate, and vow that no Time Lord will set foot on their world again. But their neighbors, now that they have deigned to remember the Sisterhood's existence, cannot easily be dismissed. Their principle of isolation, unlike Karn's, is honored only when it suits them. Only when they succeed in believing their own declarations that the rest of the universe has nothing they might lack.

Maren strikes a deal: they will provide small quantities of the Elixir – drops of sacredness exported for those with no concept of the sacred – and the Time Lords will _leave them alone_. It is a galling bargain, but a necessary one, and the Sisterhood, beneath its mysticism and its ritual, is profoundly pragmatic. So they do what must be done, and return to their lives. 

But something has been lost. Each of the Sisterhood feels it, even if none of them is willing to voice it. Each can see it in the eyes of her Sisters: The future feels less assured now, and eternity less certain.

They take to wrecking every ship that passes, watching always for betrayers and thieves, reminding the universe of their power.

**

And then: the Doctor. He defies expectation, saves them instead of stealing from them, but his arrogance is as great as Morbius' ever was, his condescension possibly even greater. They are grateful to him, as they must be, but they are not friends, and they are not sorry to see him leave.

**

For a while there is peace. And then there is Davros. His Daleks are everywhere, swarming across the universe like the vermin they are, a race devoid of nuance, of soul, of any respect for mind or life. They strike at the Time Lords, and the Time Lords respond, and the Sisterhood watch it all in their seeing-stones, in their visions, in the darkness when they close their eyes. 

The Daleks cannot be appeased. The Daleks will not leave them be in return for any share of sacredness. And so they must spend that sacredness elsewhere.

Time Lords fight and die, regenerate again and again and again, in places far from their quiet Zero Rooms and solicitous attendants. The Elixir forms, drop by slow drop, and drop by slow drop it leaks away to Gallifrey to bring its soldiers back to life so that they might die again.

The Sisters ration. They abstain. They begin to age. Time touches them, even on Karn.

**

Rassilon. _Rassilon_ , the name the Time Lords, those self-proclaimed rationalists, worship as fervently as any Sister worships the Flame.

They hear rumors: that the desiccated souls of the Matrix have been called upon to wake him from his tomb, that soon he will return to lead his people in their time of need.

The Sisterhood fears little, but they fear this. Morbius is as nothing compared to Rassilon. Davros is less frightening. They must know if the stories are true. They must know, so that they may begin to prepare themselves for a different kind of war: a war in which, no matter who wins, the Sisterhood will lose.

It takes immense power to focus their vision so clearly and so far, to search past Gallifrey's wartime defenses, to spy on the Time Lords, with their overdeveloped technologies and their closed-off minds.

Ohica channels power from her Sisters, from the Flame, from the planet itself, more and more of it until her body, aged and fragile, shakes and cries out. Her Sisters beg her to stop, but she refuses, until like Maren before her, she flares and fades and disappears, a sacrifice to the Flame.

Ohila, her Sister and her sister, receives her power, receives her gift, and with the energy of her sacrifice, produces the images they seek.

It is true. It is all true.

Ohila permits herself only a moment to mourn. A dark future is coming, and the Sisterhood must prepare.

**

The Doctor lies – dead, but not past saving – in the wreckage of the latest ship to meet its fate on Karn. Ohila knew, in her heart and her Flame-borne visions, that he would return one day. She has been waiting for him.

He saved them once, in his arrogance, in his refusal to admit there is any problem he cannot understand and solve. He will do so again. Ohila will see to it. He will become her weapon, to send out into the universe, to save and destroy as he sees the need. To do what must be done. To _interfere_.

Ohila makes him what he needs to be, and sends him on his way.

**

He returns, over and over, through what remains of the war, for no reasons he will admit. Some desire, Ohila imagines, to visit the place where his decision to become what he is is not praised, but _understood_. Or perhaps he simply finds shelter in a place devoid of both Daleks and Time Lords.

He talks, and sometimes, between the pointless prattle and the long silences, when the ache of shattered timelines shows behind his eyes, he says things to her that she is certain he has said to no one else. She talks to him in return, and she keeps his secrets.

They are not friends. Not quite. But they are two people who understand sacrifice and necessity.

**

Gallifrey falls, is removed from Time and into the dream of the Unhappened. The bright neighbor world has now never shown in Karn's night sky. But the Sisterhood remember.

**

Gallifrey returns. Davros returns. The Sisterhood remember.

**

At last, at the end of the universe, the Doctor comes home. Ohila knows this without being told. She has held his confession dial, and it has not faded from her perceptions since. She knows what he has been through. She _knows_. The Time Lords have their tedious prophecies, but Ohila has what she sees in her visions, what she feels in her bones. Has her knowledge of him, of what he has been and what he is. 

The Doctor may do something stupid. He may doom them all yet.

She remembers the first time she saw him, when neither of them knew the other's name and had no inkling of what they would become. She remembers her body moving in the rhythm of the dance, channeling the sacred energies intended to power his execution. She thinks of all the steps in all the dances they've done in all the years since, and hopes she will not come to wish they had succeeded in ending him, on that innocent day on Karn.


End file.
